Premier Electronics has released the EyeRCore-2 thermal imaging engine. It is designed to offer ultra low power consumption with a built-in FPGA, shutterless operation, and uses a 640 x 480 17µm pixel imager.
Shutterless technology allows uncooled IR engines and cameras to operate continuously without the need for a mechanical shutter for non uniformity correction (NUC) operations. By eliminating the need for a shutter, these engines are constantly open, so there are no image freezes, which is critical for applications such as missile warning systems. Shutterless engines are also smaller and lighter than conventional engines. They operate silently, have a faster start up time, consume less power, and have better MTBF. The NUC function is achieved by using look up tables and carried out on-the-fly.
The thermal imaging engine is based on a 640 x 480 pixel 17µm ASi microbolometer detector. It is tuned to the long wave infrared band with a sensitivity of <50mK at f#1. The small size and weight make it suitable for the growing requirements for UAVs, UGVs and USVs, which are providing safe and secure data acquisition in dangerous situations.
The advanced FPGA-based platform provided with this engine supports powerful algorithms ensuring high performance in poor visibility conditions, which opens up the application for driver enhanced vision. These features also offer major advantages in the security market with the ability to detect threats from long distances – a human at 2,480 metres can be detected with a 135mm lens.
The EyeRCore-2 supports multiple communication protocols and physical interfaces. The engine offers standard video PAL and NTSC, Camera Link, TTL and BT656 outputs.
